Frontline - Ten Trillion and Counting

Now over 14 trillion and counting due to the late 2008 recession. All of the federal government's efforts to stem the tide of the financial meltdown have added hundreds of billions of dollars to an already staggering national debt, a sum that is expected to double over the next 10 years to more than $23 trillion. In Ten Trillion and Counting, FRONTLINE traces the politics behind this mounting debt and investigates what some say is a looming crisis that makes the current financial situation pale in comparison

Read more: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tentrillion/view/#morelink#ixzz1WAH6TJG1

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[amanzisa]

@joseph591 - that's not entity true, if you take note you will notice that other countries are slowly de-coupling themselves from the USD.

[joseph591]

@amanzisa The United States dollar is the most widely held currency in the Allocated Reserves today. Throughout the last decade, an average of two thirds of the total Allocated foreign exchange reserves of countries have been in US dollars. USD holds 61% of world reserve currency.

[system0system0]

I just hope the americans weaken so that europe can flurish. Maybe i can get some great projects and money. And get a home and life.

[joseph591]

@system0system0 Europe seems to be in a real hole right now. Their banks did not have a strong base like ours. Investments are extremely low. And more stimulus is needed. Your going to to be working harder and longer as well as have your benefits cuts. Thats the conditions that most European countries needed to accept if they got the stimulus. And don't forget. If America goes down, the world goes down with it.

[becij13]

hmmmm....i wonder who this doc is biased towards, is it republicans....i dont think so! i love how ur lookin at these people and discussing debt limits....all these were and are war mongers aswell as bein owned by special interests...not one has ever served the people, republican or democrat. i think im right when i say obama has increased the debt the same amount bush did in 8yrs in 2.9 yrs! talk about cuts nots not tax breaks!

id rather use my time watchin balanced unbiased docs!

[joseph591]

@becij13 PBS is a good source for unbiased information. They cream both sides. But they cream the republicans more because there's more to cream. I find it strange that American don't see paying taxes as a patriotic thing. I live in Massachusetts where it is a traditional democratic state. And we agree to pay a higher tax rate in the means to help the most vulnerable. Free health care for children/poor and the best education in the country. And guess what? We still have funds left over.

[LimitedResource1959]

11 trillion when this video was made and now 15.3 trillion. By 2016 it will be 24 trillion if current spending continues.

No such thing as a free lunch people!

[Naruto0519]

@ASexyChef Do you know what FDR tried to do with taxes? He tried to do what the people wanted: cut taxes. He made the biggest tax cuts of any president. Then he turned around and made the biggest tax hikes of any president... He realized his mistake in cutting taxes. I agree that sometimes taxes need to be cut, but right now that is not what we need to do. We need to bring manufacturing back to the USA so we don't lose our profits to outsourced manufacturing. Also, use better grammar.

[Naruto0519]

@ASexyChef Do you know how much that would cost? It would effectively increase our debt to the twenty trillions.

[ASexyChef]

@USTreasuryBond Banks were lying claiming they were good loans, all the while selling all the loans for who knows how much more its actual market value, and they are still doing it. It is not even now illegal to sell sub prime morgs, free market tech would be for lobbyst, but I for one want it to be out lawed, I want more regulations in some areas, there needs to be Good Regulations, and if the gov has to bail out like the banks they need to take them over like FDR did, later on privatize them!

[ASexyChef]

@USTreasuryBond In any other sector if you sell something for more than its market value, gas stations that do price gouging are committing fraud, you sound like your one of the people who do not grasp, if homes stabilized there still would of been a housing crash, the sub prime issue, was not because people couldn't afford them thats not were most of the losses came from, it was because a home that was worth 50,000 at the height of the bubble was being sold by banks for half a million or more!

[ASexyChef]

@USTreasuryBond We need a properly regulated Free Market, a unregulated free market allows Monopolies to dominate areas. Some areas are over regulated but take the banks they had really no regulations because what regulations there were, were not even enforced, if you do not grasp that your insane. Gold line plus is being sued right now for fraud, its because they sold people gold for 3 times the market value, the subprime crash wascause banks sold homes for 10 times an already inflated level.

[ASexyChef]

@USTreasuryBond The issue is, it no longer works like that, Democrats and Republicans waste money, and we have a government that is nominated by different business interests, so Obama benefits GE, and Bush Halliburton. We have no hope of any long sited version, each politician only looks ahead to his/her own election, the companies who lobbyist them want things that will help them, the next fiscal year, our government is not that different from china, there no two party system really its a joke

[ASexyChef]

@USTreasuryBond The issue is not always spending more money than it takes in, the founding fathers actually envisioned that there would be times that you would need the goverment to take over and do more, and there would be times it would need to pull back, that is honestly were you get the two party system, one party was supposed to be for like a larger government the other for a small government, people threw voting in the two opposing parties would guide what direction was needed.

[ASexyChef]

@Naruto0519 We fixed all the known issues, we build bullet trains, fixed bridges that are just literally falling apart in some areas, solar power is actually effective when you look at the cost long term, 20 years out, so if we took all government buildings state and national level, and had them have solar panels, that were build in the USA, you would revitalize the construction industry over night, and you these jobs going on for years maybe a decade out, and taxed the rich properly.

[ASexyChef]

@Naruto0519 We do not, and honestly we should not actually do spending cuts, the Republicans acted the same way with FDR, and the national deficit was a huge focus, it keep FDR New Deal being effective, we know the only thing that ended the great depression was WWII because the USA nationalized huge sectors of the private industry and in the short run it dramatically increased the debt, but the US actually invested in itself too. If spent what we wasted on the banks or just half 4 trillion